OK now I'm not typing on a phone I can complain in full
So first off, the pricing bites. It's 3x the sub of Pokemon Bank for a yearly subscription (actually a smidge more), to begin with. There
are monthly & 3 month passes except the monthly pass is about half the total sub of Bank and the 3 month pass is the exact price. There
is a free basic version but the differences between basic & premium are somehow both stark AND arbitrary. Like you go from 30 pokemon to
6000,
the ability to use Bank is locked off entirely, you dont get to make your own trade rooms. Meanwhile you go from 1 GTS to ...3? And 3 pokemon in a wonder box to 10? You can't access the Judge feature
at all? The basic feature is basically here solely to transfer a small pokemon between multiple games on the same system which, appreciated, but also kind of sucky when sitting next to the Premium. At the same time the premium additions to GTS & Wonder Box feel weirdly low, like is that really a commodity? And I have *no clue* why the Judge feature is locked behind it. What is that
super intensive on the cloud network? C'mon.
People are probably quick to point out that there
are more features than Bank, which is true, but those features do not to me account for the increase price. Trading as a whole is probably more intensive, which is why I did expect a price increase....but the increase to $16 is like...not what I thought at all. I figured about $8 or
maybe $10. $10 would still be a lot and would probably get some complaints but it's definitely better than $10. And if you just REALLY wanted GTS, mobile trading and wonder trade that is, nicely, put into the free package in a more limited form factor.
And everything else is just...fluff. National Dex. The home stickers (which I bet are severely limited without Bank, incidentally). News, battle data, mystery gift, that's just stuff rolled in from what they'd offer elsewhere.
And of course the thing almost everyone would want to use it for more than antyhing, Bank, is of course put behind
2 paywalls, my worst fear realized. You have to pay for Bank in addition to Home; the cheapest version is $3 for that first month since Bank will get a free month but after that it is ideally $8. Problem is that once your susbcription runs out the pokemon are now stuck in Home which gets exponentially worse depending onw hat kind of collector yo uwere and what games you have because hey! Let's not forget that ~200 pokemon will be locked away to Home until who knows when. We can assume you'll be able to pull them down but iirc Bank can and will delete your POkemon after a grace period is over so you'll probably need to reup the sub anyway. Frankly, Premium should just
come with a Bank sub. At least that would slightly offset the price.
But let's put aside the pricing for a bit and talk about how Home just...straight up has features that
should be in SWSH?:
- GTS
- The ability to have a friends list
- The abiltiy to make a room
- The ability to just trade with a friend without needing a 4 digit code
Like there's no reason to lock these away into the App even if some of these are available in a limited fashion on the free version. I would really hope that these are added, for free, at some point down the line.
And also....the arbitrary restrictions between the Switch & Mobile versions of the app. The app, and only the app, can:
- User Mystery Gift. Considering some of these only give a code and others are specifically only available through Home it's just bizarre.
- Use the special National Dex functions like viewing abilities and moves and searching by them. Why? No really, why? What psosible reason is there to shortchange the Switch Home like this?
- All trade functionality can only be done through the Mobile version. This means if you ever want to use GTS you'd have to make sure you put it into the Switch App, pull out the phone, initiate the trade, check on it later, then pull it out of the switch app. This is so needlessly extended. And it was already annoying that you have to go to a separate app to GTS at all. Much less use Trading That Isn't Trash.
- In ability to check Battle Data & News.
Just in general, if I'm pulling up the Switch version of the app why can I not also participate in the other functionality. Like I already have it booted up, why not let me check some battle data? Why not grab a Mystery Gift? If I have NSO let me use the GTS. No seriously why is the cool national dex search options locked to mobile?
And despite all this I'll have to put up with it because I would really like my Pokemon on hand rather than trapped a generation behind and in the future. It's frustrating.
cute that all the renders mimic the official artwork tho. thanks art team.
What makes this particular deal tough to swallow for me is that pokemon's online is already a broken unintuitive mess that tanks the game's performance. At least smash has smooth online, my wild area drops to single digit FPS if I'm connected.
